


all things grow

by outwardbound93



Series: everything changes [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Asexual Character, Canon Compliant, IKEA Furniture, M/M, Mixtape, The Lord of the Rings References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 02:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6782308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outwardbound93/pseuds/outwardbound93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe this is doing it all over again, Harry thinks, looking out at a crowd whose cell phone cameras are lit up as far as he can see, like stars in a summer sky. Harry turns and sees Niall there beside him, his face all wonder. The years haven’t touched him a bit. “Well,” says Niall. “It’s not space, but it’ll do.”  </p><p>Or, Harry acts, and sings, and figures out who he is when he's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all things grow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goreallegore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goreallegore/gifts).



> this fic was a DELIGHT to write, and i wouldn't have written it without arwa urging me on. thank u very much to her. there's a lil list of songs mentioned in this fic [here](https://niallspringsteen.tumblr.com/post/144013028817/1-chicago-the-staves-2-casual-party-band), and the image that inspired the title of the fic is embedded below. 
> 
> this fic is a companion to the fic [things change](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6152685), so u can read it before you read this one, or not.
> 
> also, the aceness depicted in this fic is just one way to experience being ace. asexuality is a whole spectrum, and this fic just represents a teeny tiny part!

The best kinds of parties have ice sculptures, Harry thinks. He’s been to enough of these fancy dos now that he can sort of tell before he’s even walked through the door whether the party will be talked about at the next industry event or not. The music is usually pitched just loud enough to cover up whispers, but not so loud that you can’t yell over the top, and waiters slip through the ranks of privileged celebrities with not-too-fancy hors d’oeuvres on silver or, lately, raw wooden platters.

Most importantly, there’s someone there for everyone to remember. Sometimes it’s Leo and Rihanna out to have a wild night together that gets everybody thrown on the bandwagon with them like some sort of convoy of famous people who still need a push to believe that they really can do anything. Tonight, Harry thinks, it’s Niall. Or maybe that’s only for Harry.

A breeze stirs the air on the club’s back patio, where Harry’s taken to hiding out with a sweating bottle of hard lemonade and his phone clutched in his hand, Gemma’s last _For God’s sakes, Harry_ unhelpfully lit up on the screen. Harry’s been trying to make it a point to show up for as many of his cast and crewmates’ events as he can before filming starts so that he’ll feel less like a fish out of water when Christopher Nolan or someone is telling him to take a five at his trailer or visit the foley artists or something.

Harry’s ninety percent sure that he’s gotten all the terminology wrong, but there’s only so much you can learn from watching _The_ _Lord of the Rings_ behind the scenes special features eight times. He’s been too nervy to ask around, although he knows nobody would think him silly for it. Nobody goes into something they’ve never done before an expert at it. God knows Harry was no kind of expert at being in a band before One Direction happened, but he was younger then, and making mistakes didn’t feel so anxiety-inducing. The whole world wasn’t watching.

The gentle summer breeze tickles the back of Harry’s neck where just recently he had so much hair to cover it up, and he reaches back and cups the bony nub at the top of his spine self-consciously. He feels bare. And silly, and hot in this back garden that’s not even like a beer garden, where they’d be a bin for burnt fags and maybe a nice bench for sitting down on when the alcohol went to your head.

Instead, the club has this fancy sculpture made of stone that’s meant to spurt water all over the place, but California’s water restrictions have shut it down, and now even the algae at the bottom of the empty pool is dying. It smells a bit like one of the cattle feeds Harry grew up around back when he was a schoolboy in a sleepy village. Maybe the smell is what’s keeping everybody else from the back garden tonight, or maybe it’s the heat. Harry wonders whether there’s enough alcohol inside to fill the fountain pool. Probably. He can just imagine going for a little swim in a pool of wine, and the headlines that would make, and he decides not to suggest it.

“I don’t think they’d let you go for a swim,” someone intones behind him. Harry jumps, and his lemonade almost slips from his hand. His phone clatters to the ground, which is embarrassing on two wholly separate levels, because on one hand he’s such a klutz, and on the other hand, now he and this other person are both going to feel bad if he’s broken his phone. Again. Harry lamely kneels to pick up his phone. “Sorry,” Niall says, half a smile on his face and his hands in his pockets, when Harry looks up.

Harry looks down at his phone. He licks his lips. “Not broken,” he announces, as though Niall had asked.

“Good,” Niall says. Harry carefully pushes himself up to his feet and thanks every God in heaven that his hands are full so he doesn’t have to worry about what to do with them.

As if he can read Harry’s mind, Niall takes a step closer. He tugs the bottle out of Harry’s hand and asks even as he peers at the label through his annoyingly handsome glasses, “What’s this you’re having then, hard lemonade?” Niall lets out that laugh edged with a sigh, the one Harry thought was exasperated. “Harry,” Niall says. _Ari,_ Harry hears. “Let me buy you a real drink.”

So Harry does. Niall leads their way through the dance floor packed with bodies wearing clothing worth several dozen uni tuitions, easy. Paul McCartney’s advice, when Harry met him, was to give it away. Those were his words, “Give it all away,” so Harry doubled his charitable donations that year and grew his hair out till he could give it to someone to make better use of it and thought, Well, that was lovely. Sometimes he still feels a bit rotten about it though. How much he has and how little other people have, even though they’re all just people, DNA and humanity and music.

He’s starting to think Paul meant more than just the money, but he’s not quite sure how to go about that yet.

Harry keeps his eyes on Niall’s broad shoulders and the loose cups of his palms and his narrow hips, the soles of his shoes almost flat he’s worn them so much. Harry’s as much LA as he is England now, or maybe more, but there’s no removing Niall from the context of his own life. Harry wants to touch the bare strip of skin between the top of his collar and his hair, but he’s not sure he’s allowed, so he settles for casually running into Niall from behind, instead. He smells like cinnamon.

“What’ll you have?” Niall asks, turning to Harry with his elbows braced on the bar.

“Margarita,” is the first word that pops into Harry’s mind.

Niall relays their order to the bartender and leans his hip against the edge of the counter, and Harry’s heart starts pounding. _This is it,_ he thinks. It might not be the last time he ever sees Niall, but these days, anytime Harry sees Niall he feels like it might be for the last. He has his own work now, and Niall has all of his business ventures, and the Venn diagram of their lives is splitting from one circle into two. Or maybe it already has split, like a cell undergoing mitosis – he quit school, but he’s not stupid – and all they have left between them is the memory of being one. Harry doesn’t know whether it’s better to remember or to forget and move on. He aches.

 _This is it,_ Harry thinks, like the skydiver braced at the open hull of the plane. _This is it,_ Harry thinks, like the executioner administering the lethal dose, and like the criminal waiting for it to kick in. _This is it._

Harry remembers reading one of Gemma’s articles for the online magazine she writes for sometimes, and how people feel much more comfortable if they know they have even one friend around. Without even seeing their friend, the person’s anxiety and heart rate drops. Like Ron being Harry Potter’s second, Harry thinks, or gunslingers meeting at high noon in the O.K. Corral. Niall’s particular gift is making everybody feel like he’s their friend, so the longer Harry spends in Niall’s little sphere of personal influence, the more this party starts to feel like a house party, and the more Harry thinks about Niall going home with someone else.

Which is a completely irrelevant thing to think about, honestly. So Niall slept over a handful of times in Harry’s bed. So Harry got to wake up to Niall sprawled across his sheets looking soft and downy as the fine hair on his forearms. It doesn’t mean anything, really. Right? Because there’s a line Harry won’t cross and maybe that’s what sleeping together and not just sleeping means to Niall.

Usually sex is made to seem like a cataclysmic event. It’s treated like a rite of passage that takes you from being old mates to friends to something else, something sort of mysterious and beyond, a place for people who’ve been in love and understand what that means. What it does to you. Only, they haven’t done that, and Harry hadn’t realized that he was living in that place all on his own, is all.

Harry finishes his strawberry margarita and texts his new security manager, Jake, to send a car round. He’s ready to go home. Niall catches him with his phone under the table and raises that eyebrow, so Harry can’t stop himself saying, “It’s getting pretty late.”

"Yeah, you – I’m sure you’ve got a busy day ahead of you,” Niall says. He’s been chatting to a woman beautiful enough to be a supermodel for the past few minutes about the Horan and Rose thing, and how much fun it was to write a couple of tunes for that, and how great the kids were, so Harry knows he’s not leaving Niall on his own.

Still, for some strange reason, he asks, “Want to come?” Like he’s inviting Niall out to lunch with himself and Lou and Lux on tour or for a round of golf anywhere in the world.

“Sure,” Niall says, to Harry’s everlasting surprise.

The venue has one of those long driveways with a gate at the end to keep the paps out, so Niall and Harry wait at the kerb for the car to come get them. Harry always thinks it’s weird how the back of a venue always feels less connected to the venue than the front. Like the car parks and decorative shrubbery and all the rest of it are made to look appealing, but the backstage stuff like the kitchens and the dressing rooms and the loos are an underworld of their own.

Harry wonders what it means that he prefers those backstage spaces to the cobblestone driveway with little solar lights posted every few feet and butterflies lured to fly around for that picturesque effect by hollyhock and lavender. The flowers perfume the midsummer air and make it sweet and heavy, and Harry leans into the alcohol trickling through his veins, halfway to sleeping on his feet.

Niall braces him with a hand on his shoulder that looks manful and friendly from a distance, like say if they were papped, but that feels like so much more than that on Harry’s person. “I think the fair folk got to you,” Niall says, a smile tilting up one corner of his mouth. “You know the rule about not drinking anything the fairies give you, don’t you?”

“You’re not a fairy,” is Harry’s brilliant response. He’s rewarded by Niall’s laughter. Privately Harry thinks he might be a little bit magic. If you look at him just the right way, in the right light, something magic slips out of his eyes and the lines on his face.

 _This is it,_ Harry thinks again, his heart suddenly in his throat. He thinks of it while he and Niall climb into the back of the car. _This is it,_ Harry thinks, and tries to memorize the sliver of Niall’s knee peeking out of the tear in his jeans, and how he holds his hands in his lap. _This is it,_ Harry thinks, and tries to hold onto everything, even while details slip through his fingers. The shape of Niall’s jaw and how soft his stubble looks in the streetlights shining through the car windows and the familiar rhythm of his breathing. The way he smells.

Niall follows Harry inside his LA house but stops just inside the entryway to kick off his boots. Harry, who lives here, thinks about taking his shoes off, too. He likes having them beside the bed, though, so that he can wake up and just slip them on and be off. Harry likes the idea of mobility like that although it’s been a long time since he’s gone anywhere by himself, and of course he usually has to call a car first. He likes the idea of it, though.

Harry flicks on the kitchen lights and opens the creaky pantry door. He has a loaf of bread from the bakery, so he takes a block of cheese and the leftover roast duck from the other night out of the fridge.

“Ah,” says Niall, looking over the spread. “Thrifty Michelin star. I like it.”

Harry pauses with his hand on the bread knife. He’s not sure whether to be offended or flattered. He decides to take the comment as a compliment because that’s how he wants to take it and cuts thick slices of the bread, and then he pops it into the oven to warm with cuts of cheese to melt on top.

Niall’s boosted himself up on the counter and kicks his heels, gently, against the cupboard where Harry stores his plastic bag full of crumpled up plastic bags. He called Gemma stumped the other night about what he plans to do with it, and Gemma had said, “It’s just a thing people do, Haz. Don’t worry about it.”

So Harry asks Niall, “Do you want some plastic bags to take back to London with you?”

Niall answers, “Nah, got a bag full of ‘em at home and no idea what to do with ‘em.” He smiles and nudges Harry’s knee with the toe of his trainer, and Harry wonders, abruptly, what he’s meant to do now. The way he sees it, he’ll feed Niall and then maybe he can ask to watch a movie but he’ll feel bad for talking over it, so he’ll spend the whole two hours sat next to Niall imagining all the things he could say if he wasn’t so maddeningly polite.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Niall asks, and Harry pauses, wondering whether Niall’s read his mind again. Was what he last thought particularly incriminating? “Bein’ here, I mean, with you. ‘S like the last six years didn’t, I don’t know, disappear.” Even though they’re over now.

“We’re like Sam and Frodo,” Harry says. “Back in Hobbiton after they destroyed the ring and scoured the shire.”

Niall cocks his head. His blue eyes glimmer under Harry’s soft kitchen lights, and his breathing mingles with the whirring water inside the dishwasher. “You think so?” he asks.

Harry feels himself shrug. “Would like to be.” He thinks that’s quite a nice end, actually. Not the part where Frodo sets sail for the Gray Havens, but the _real_ end, the one that continues past him. Harry thinks of Samwise going back into his hobbit hole and saying, “Well, I’m back,” and he thinks, _Someday._

Harry watches Niall tuck into his sandwich of leftovers and brainstorms things to keep Niall from leaving just yet. _This is it._ “When you’re done with that,” he finds his giant gob saying, “would you mind helping me with something?”

Harry bought a house with a multimedia room because he’s had houses with a half dozen bedrooms before, and nothing else, so now he knows the importance of not living in a mausoleum. The thing is, he’s not quite sure how to set up a multimedia room, and he put off hiring anyone else to do because he didn’t know when he’d be in town to show them in.

So now Harry has a room with a projector and film screen and smart touch laptop still in their boxes, and no clue what to do with them. At the very least, the enormous velvet couch he ordered came in. Harry shucks his boots and goes to tie up his hair before he remembers he doesn’t have enough hair to tie up anymore, and then he lays down on the couch to watch Niall get to work.

Niall pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and unfolds the instructions to the IKEA overhead hanging bin, first, to put the projector in. Harry sets his phone on his chest and flips through his music library.

“Play my mix,” Niall says, so Harry asks, “The Spotify one?”

“No,” Niall answers. “The playlist you have for songs you want me to hear.” He says it so casually that even Harry doesn’t think anything of it, of the fact that he has a whole list of songs that he’s been waiting to show Niall himself so that he can watch his face change as he listens. It’s so strange to be so close to someone and to hardly spend any time at all with them. It’s even stranger to be in love with someone that you love in so many ways, because they all get mixed up together. The edges of loving Niall like a brother bleed into loving him like his best friend and across the flimsy borders to the sort of love that Taylor always said she’d never stop looking for. Maybe the strangest part of all is to be in love with someone and not to know whether somewhere deep in all the ways they love you back, there’s _in_ love, too.

The difference, Harry knows, is in that most ways you love someone, you have to let them go so you don’t end up holding them back. Parents and children get each other back. Sometimes friends and lovers don’t.

Harry plays Niall Ben Howard’s cover of “Dancing in the Dark,” because he thinks it’ll tickle Niall. Niall hears those first few guitar chords and starts smiling, his blond head bobbing along. “So you did listen to my mix!”

“Of course,” Harry sniffs.

Niall sits back on his heels with the little IKEA screwdriver in one hand and a bit of plastic whatsit in the other. Half-drunk and full on bread and cheese, and still meticulous and thoughtful and deliberate. Harry doesn’t have the words for how much he’s missed him. “I thought you might not, since you’re becoming a bigheaded actor now, and all.”

Harry reaches out just to brush the backs of Niall’s knuckles with his fingertips. The light touch makes something heavy swoop in Harry’s stomach. “I’ve always had a big head,” Harry just says, with a smile.

Niall’s been sitting on his heels, but now he rearranges his skinny legs and folds them in front of him. “You really want to be an actor?” he double-checks. “I thought you were Jagger.”

Harry shrugs. “I don’t really know what I am,” he admits. Sometimes the truth sneaks out like that and reverberates in the air, so that you know something real has just happened. For Harry’s part, he’s not all that surprised by the admission. That’s what actors are for, right? Trying on different costumes and different selves until they find one that fits?

“What do you want to be?” Niall asks simply.

 _Loved_ , Harry thinks, pitiful as it is. “A dad,” he says instead.

Niall smiles. His eyes look the tiniest bit hurt before they carefully shutter, and Harry wonders. Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint pain in Niall when he’s so good at disguising it from everyone, including himself.

“Thanks,” says Harry. The question is on the tip of his tongue – what about you, what do you want to be? – but he’s frightened of the answer, so he says nothing at all. The fear, at least for Harry, is that he’s never getting off tour. That the rest of his life is a series of wonderful, magical nights in far-flung places with people he falls in love with at the drop of a hat, and that he’ll never meet again. Life has a way of moving you along like a leaf on a stream, and what you take with you aren’t things that you can hold. You don’t decide where you go, and there’s no going back.  

There’s just this. _This is it_ , Harry thinks.

There’s Harry smiling and kicking Niall, gently, in the shoulder. There’s Niall laughing even as he tries to scowl, the half-finished IKEA shelf forgotten on the floor. There’s a lot, as it turns out.

Harry falls asleep on his huge velvet couch with Niall quietly humming along to Harry’s playlist, the feel of Niall’s skin clinging to his fingertips.

Harry wakes up tangled in a blanket to a glass of water and two Aspirin with a sticky note stuck to his forehead that reads, _See ya around, Styles_.

***

Harry’s on set with earplugs in for the massive explosive sequence checking his email when he gets the Twitter notification. “@NiallOfficial: some new tunes for ya !” and a Spotify link. When Harry clicks it, he’s not at all surprised to find half of his Niall mix on Niall’s new playlist.

Harry texts him on his way back to cast accommodations that evening. He’s managed to wipe most of the dirt off, but the paint and soil combo that the makeup artists use to make him look like he’s spent time in a shell-shocked city doesn’t come clean without a long, hot shower. Sometimes Harry looks at himself in the mirror and he thinks he makes quite a convincing young French civilian. Sometimes he thinks he looks like a little boy playing dress-up, and that’s alright, too. He sort of is.

 _I should sue you_ , Harry texts, because he knows it’ll make Niall snort and laugh. He wonders what time it is in London. He’d call, but Niall may not even be in London, and Harry doesn’t want to interrupt him at work. _Playlist infringement,_ Harry taps, slowly taking the stairs up to his little flat. _Two years to life. No parole._

 _Shut the hell up,_ Niall texts back, fondly. Harry sends, _And you have to pay a fine._

Harry answers the phone when it rings to Niall with an edge of laughter, bright and ebullient, in his voice. Harry understands. He’s been friends with Niall for the better part of a decade now and he still gets excited to talk to him, too.

“What are you doing calling the likes of me?” Harry asks. He drags his sore feet through the tidy kitchen where he’s been teaching himself how to cook and kicks off his trainers and jeans in the bedroom. He never bothers to make his bed, but with Niall on the phone right now, he sort of wishes he had. It’d make that pedantic part of Niall happy. “I would’ve thought you’d be too busy planning your next charity benefit or the next single you’re going to produce, or –”

“Alright, alright,” Niall laughs. “Shut up, I get it.”

Harry smiles to himself. He’s glad Niall tries. He wants him to try. He wants him to be great.

“How’s filming going?” Niall asks, so Harry answers. He rambles through a detailed summary of what it’s like to be harnessed up and plopped in front of a green screen to act like the room was crumbling down around him while he digs a bag of frozen broccoli out of the freezer and a box of pasta noodles out of the cupboard. “Good,” Niall says, when Harry finally trails off. He’s got a clove of garlic in his hand and his brain is so tired right now he can’t remember how to crack it open. Oh, that’s right. With the heel of his hand on the counter.

Niall’s _Good_ feels like a benediction. Harry repeats, “Good,” and then he says, “I’ve just put a whole clove of garlic into these noodles.”

“I didn’t know you liked garlic that much.”

“I can’t remember if I do, either,” Harry muses. “Guess I’ll find out. Wish you were here to eat some. I’m turning into a proper good cook.”

Niall huffs just the way Harry knew he would. Little Gordon Ramsey Junior. Harry smiles to himself and stirs his noodles. He could set his watch by Niall, he thinks. “Invite me round, then, Styles.”

“Okay. Come over.”

“I don’t actually know when I’m free,” Niall says, his voice going far away for a moment before he hits the speaker button. Harry can just picture him laid out on his soft bed with the creamy white duvet, his ankles delicate and bony and the only bit of exposed skin between the collar of his jumper and the hem of his skinny jeans. Harry could write sonnets about Niall’s ankles, probably. Niall’s fingers make soft tapping sounds on his phone screen when he checks his calendar.

Harry makes a soft, hurt sound. “Break my heart, then.”

“Eh, I’m doing you a favor,” Niall says. Harry closes his eyes when he reckons Niall does. His arm is probably curled beneath his head and he’s left his phone on his chest. The mattress feels like a cloud. “Knowing you, you’ll turn it into a number one single.”

“I’m not Taylor,” Harry says, just to be difficult and contrary.

Harry thinks about politely asking after what he did all day and how his business affairs are going, but he could find most of that out on the internet. What he most wants to know is the boring stuff, like what song he’d be humming under his breath while he mixed bread dough on the counter (The Lumineers, Harry wagers), and what he’d fall asleep telling Harry curled up next to him in bed, soft and solid and sweet, smelling like tea and Sunday roast.

“Come over,” Harry repeats.

“Yeah,” Niall says, mostly asleep now. “Okay.”

Niall’s plane lands at noon on the one day a week Harry has off. He’s counting the hours in his head until he has to report back to set and Niall leaves, and he wants to make the most of them. He’s got a tee time and dinner reservations booked in case Niall wants to do either.

Jake, Harry’s new head of security, drives him to the airport. Harry’s rearranging the songs on his Niall playlist when the door opens and Niall himself all but spills into his lap.

“Well, well,” Harry says, looking down at him with a smile.

“Christ, you’re practically bald,” Niall says. Harry budges over to make room for him in the seat and thinks about pressing his palms to the smooth, exposed skin of Niall’s throat. He thinks about licking and biting the hollow between his collarbones, and how Niall’s skin would redden, and he thinks about hugging him till his arms fall off. He settles for melting into Niall’s touch, Niall’s hands in his hair feeling out the shape of his skull.

Jake clears his throat. “Where are we off to, lads?”

“I want to see the studio,” Niall says.

Showing Niall around is weird, Harry thinks. He’s so used to the days when Niall knew everything about all the things Harry did because he was there. Deep down he still leans into that, into being known so well. Sometimes Harry doesn’t think he knows himself at all, and then he’s grateful that someone does.

Niall takes everything in with wide eyes, same as he’d done the time he toured the space center, probably, and for a wild moment, panic seizes Harry’s heart. If he asked, surely someone would take him to space. If he were an alien, Harry thinks, how could he not look at Niall and fall a little in love with what it is to be human?

“You shouldn’t go to space,” Harry says, while Niall tries on a wire harness.

Niall gives Harry a look. “‘Course not,” Niall says. “There’s no golf in space.”

They wind up their tour on set, where Christopher’s directing Tom and half a dozen extras mill about looking like they stepped out of a history book. “You like it, then?” Niall asks. He’s folded his arms over his chest and the muscles in his biceps and triceps are frustratingly distracting, not to mention the freckles trailing down his throat and the dusting of hair on his legs.

Harry gives a simple answer. “Yes.” He’s looking forward to it being over, too. He’s not quite ready yet, but he will be.  

He’s got a record deal now, too, so he has something to work on when the film is done and he’s just waiting for it to drop. The next three years of Harry’s life are planned for interesting projects and collaborations and Harry’s proper excited about them. While he’s looking forward to all the work, he’s also looking forward to the unmapped territory at the end, like his life is a train rumbling through a tunnel and at the end of the next few years is open sky and ground.

 _Terrae incognita,_ Harry remembers, from a book he read once. Unknown territory. There be dragons _._

He’d like to go away for a little while and dream it all up again. Harry thinks Niall understands. He hopes he does. Somewhere in his heart, Harry’s decided to hope that maybe that’s when they can give themselves a real chance. He doesn’t think of it like waiting. _Waiting_ implies that what’s going on right now isn’t good, or that you’re just counting down for it to be over. Right this minute, Harry’s doing exactly what he wants.

“Me, too,” Niall says, as though he’s read Harry’s mind.

Harry thinks of Niall with someone else, smiling and secretly proud, like Harry always knew he would be. Niall getting married. Niall having kids. Niall not missing out on a single thing. It’s amazing how much you can want for someone else as long as you don’t think about yourself, or what you want.

In the shuttle on their way back to Harry’s place, Niall muses, “Christ, you know, I haven’t even thought that far ahead. Maybe I’ll have shaved my head and finally gotten a tattoo. Maybe I’ll be on tour again.”

Harry hums, low, “That’d be great for you, Nialler.” They’re stood on opposite sides of the aisle and the bus is driving along nice and slow, with an old Simon and Garfunkel song on the radio. Harry leans out and bumps his hip against Niall’s though he hasn’t got a real excuse to. “You’ll have to invite me to a show.”

“Course,” Niall says. Harry cooks him dinner and chats shit and hangs his heart on the promise.

***

Harry’s favorite daydream goes like this:

He’ll come home from a long day at the studio recording his first album and find Niall sitting on the steps outside his house, just like before. He stands up and brushes the back of his jeans off, and he just laughs when Harry trips over his own feet hurrying up the walk.

He hasn’t brought any bags, because Harry can never think of a smooth way to get his stuff upstairs and into Harry’s room, not a guest room. He feels presumptuous to assume even though this is his own damn daydream. It’s alright, anyway. He’s left enough of his shit over that he’s got plenty to wear, anyway.

Harry shows him where the spare key is, and then he lets them both inside. Harry falls asleep knowing that it’s alright to sleep. He’s got Niall the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, till he can’t count the days anymore.

Niall’s there. Nothing much else changes.

Maybe it’s summer all year long, too.

“What’s wrong, sour puss?” Grimmy asks, his big hand cupped round the back of Harry’s neck. His breath smells like tequila and Fireball, a lethal combination by all counts, so Harry gives him the Reader’s Digest edition. He just wrapped up his solo album and that daydream is never going to come true. Grimmy nods seriously, and then he says, “You need to do another shot.” Harry lets himself be dragged to the bar.

Taylor’s here tonight for Grimmy’s housewarming party. All month he’s been saying this is his last young people do and that after this, he’s going to have tame parties with nothing but white wine so it won’t stain his carpets and tasteful viewings of French cinema. Harry thinks he’ll have to have a lot of white wine on hand for those parties.

“You’re still coming, then,” Taylor points out with a smile.

“Naturally,” Harry says. He feels far too much like himself – that is to say, a sort of stuffy British bloke without any real interest in the intricacies of French cinema – so he adds, “You, too?”

Taylor shrugs. “I don’t know. I think maybe it’s been long enough the world isn’t sick of me anymore. It might be time to do another album.”

Harry laughs. She’s aging gracefully, just like he knew she would, but there’s no denying the passage of time on her face. Or on his. They’ve grown into older versions of themselves that can stand around at a Radio One party while Grimmy’s finally just done with Radio One and something about that has Harry so melancholic and weepy he’s talking about his daydreams out loud.

Just, One Direction wasn’t a found family for him, it was a _made_ family. And now Grimmy’s losing his own little made family. It just makes Harry sad, because he’d like to think that family is something permanent, but it’s not. Nothing ever lasts, not even family, because people keep changing.

 _This is it,_ Harry thinks, and loves it so much he knows it’ll make him sad someday.

“What are you going to write about?” Harry asks.

Taylor hums. “You.” She watches his face carefully, and then she laughs. “I’m just kidding. You know, I did think, for a while, that I could write about you forever. And then,” she shrugs.

“People change,” Harry knows. People move on. For his part, he can’t even remember the last time he saw Liam or sent Louis a message. He hardly even thinks about Zayn anymore as someone he used to consider a brother. Zayn’s not that Zayn now, and Harry’s not that Harry, and he’s homesick as hell for a place he’s never been.

“Nah,” Taylor says. “People grow.”

***

Harry does a cover of “We Built This City” at a gig in the middle of nowhere, USA. The crowd is loud and responsive and so willing to be swept up along with him to the places that aren’t on any maps. He wrote an album on his unreliable memory about the things he knows, and the things he knows are these: pack one bag and take it with you on the plane, don’t check it; sleep whenever and wherever you can, and fall in love with everyone you meet.

He picks that song to cover because he’s not allowed to cover any One Direction songs and the one that he would want to cover isn’t a song designed for just one singer, so instead he’s making this one about them.

“ _We just want to dance here,_ ” Harry sings, “ _someone stole the stage. They call us irresponsible, write us off the page_.” Sometimes he feels like he’s lived his life in reverse, with the success most people spend their whole life building toward happening to him when he was so young. The rest of his life’s got to be less bombastic than all that.

Right now, he doesn’t feel very old at all. Harry would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Maybe this is doing it all over again, Harry thinks, looking out at a crowd whose cell phone cameras are lit up as far as he can see, like stars in a summer sky. Harry turns and sees Niall there beside him, his face all wonder. The years haven’t touched him a bit. “Well,” says Niall. “It’s not space, but it’ll do.”  

Back on the tour bus that night, Harry rings up Louis to ask, “Your maths teacher. The one who said you’d never amount to anything. Did you ever talk to him again? What’d he say?”

“Hm?” Louis asks. He sounds groggy as hell, so Harry reckons he must’ve just woken him up. Harry wonders where in the world he is. “Oh. I don’t know. I never spoke to him after.”

“What do you think he’d say?” Harry presses.

Louis heaves a deep breath. “These days, I reckon I hope he’d say, ‘Good work.’”

“Good work,” Harry repeats. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Sure thing,” says Louis.

Harry leans his head against the window and looks up at the stars, and he thinks, _This is it._ It’ll do.

***

Niall kisses Harry thoroughly, like he’s a new guitar and Niall is learning every note. Niall’s fingers bite into Harry’s hips and Harry angles his head and kisses him harder, like some kind of well-meaning Dementor sucking his soul out through his mouth. Harry keeps bumping the frame of Niall’s glasses with his nose, but he sort of likes them on. Niall needs them to see, so they’re a part of him, so Harry likes them.

“Tour’s over,” Harry says, when Niall pulls away to catch his breath. He leaves his hands on Harry’s sides, his hips pressed firmly against Harry’s. It’s nice to be held.

“I know,” Niall laughs. “This is _your_ end of tour party.”

They’re having it at an old roller rink because the seventies are back in style and disco balls, to be fair, never went out of style. Harry quite likes the way everyone is dressed up the way his mum looks in pictures from when she was a girl. The last show of tour came sooner than he expected, and later. He’s gone on tours that’ve spanned years, and he’s not that tired yet. But he feels like more’s happened in the past few months than in most decades.

 _People grow_ , he remembers Taylor saying.

Harry swallows. He knows Niall knows, but he’s trying to imply something. He’s got nothing planned or booked or scheduled, no albums or movies or books or memoirs or any of the rest of it. For the foreseeable future, he’s not Harry Styles™. He’s just Harry. _Terra incognita._

Niall’s mouth is slick and bruised and achingly familiar, and for a split second, Harry thinks, _I shouldn’t have done it._ Now he’s kissed Niall and there’s nothing left, no secrets or mysteries. Niall knows everything he can possibly know about Harry. The moment passes, and the fear in Harry’s heart is quelled. He thinks, _There’s nothing to be afraid of,_ but that’s not quite true. What’s more true is that he has nothing to lose but what he hopes to gain.

Harry strokes his thumb over Niall’s flushed cheek. “You’re a nice dragon,” he says. “Toothless, or something.” Harry leaves his thumb over Niall’s laughter line to feel the way it creases when he smiles.

“Weird one,” Niall says. He steps back to give Harry room to breathe, and so that they aren’t so obvious. He looks every inch Harry's dear friend, which he is. 

“I’m going to be an explorer,” Harry presses, getting back to the point.

“Oh, really?” Niall asks. “Of what?”

Harry punches him, lightly, in the shoulder. “You.”

“Me?”

“Eh, you know. It’s not space, but…” Harry laughs. 

“I thought I was a dragon,” Niall says.

Harry shrugs. “You are. You’re all of it.”


End file.
